Short Circuits

by Dorien Grey

  My Dad, never in my entire life, laid a hand on me, though I am sure he was tempted, and he certainly had ample and frequent cause. Mom would whack me on the behind, and the embarrassment and mental anguish far outweighed the pain.

  But I see I am wandering, as you may have noticed I’m wont to do. We moved to Hutchins Avenue the summer before I began ninth grade, and the Blackhawk Avenue house was rented to my maternal grandmother, Gertrude, and her fourth husband, Albert Ameely, who lived there for several years.

  After Dad’s death, mom sold the house to a man named Washington, and before he paid off the mortgage, which I think Mom held, the house was gutted by fire. Today it is an empty lot but, last time I passed by there several years ago, the tree, now very tall, was still standing. And of all the billions of people in the world, who but me knows I planted it? Well, now there’s you.

  * * *

  HOMES

  Though it never occurred to me until much later in life, my family was what used to be known as “lower middle class,” a term seldom if ever heard any more. It applied to financial status, but I never cared for its other connotations. Both my parents worked very hard all their lives and despite the fact that neither of them graduated from high school, they did their very best to see to it that I never wanted for anything that was really important in a child’s life.

  The first home I remember was the 14-foot trailer in which we lived in Gary, Indiana during the time I had my broken leg, and which I described in an earlier entry. Imagine if you will two adults and a five year old boy, in a full body cast from just under his armpits to below his knees, living in a total area of about 114 square feet. Oh, yes, and we had a dog. As I have mentioned before, the smell of kerosene still pulls me back in time and I see my mom priming the stove with a small hand pump to get the kerosene flowing. I can still hear the hiss of the gas and the “pop” of when the kerosene ignited.

  The next home I remember was, in fact, a converted garage in Loves Park, Illinois, a suburb of Rockford. The bathroom was a small wooden 5’x5’x7’ (if that) rectangle in the back of the property. We lived there during my first two years of school. The school was less than a block away, and I have fond memories of, in spring, using a flat piece of plywood to skim across the water-filled empty lot between our house and the school.

  The one-block-long, dead end street on which we lived was named “Loves Court” and it was here I had my first introductions to sex: playing “you show me yours” with a girl classmate in an overturned outhouse—which, as I’ve said elsewhere, totally revolted me and slammed the door firmly on however remote a chance there might have been that I could ever have been straight. The same game with a male classmate, on the other hand confirmed what I already knew. I liked boys, not girls.

  From Loves Court we moved to 328 Blackhawk Avenue, on Rockford’s south side. A tiny, four-room structure, it was still another step up in my parents’ march through life. It was set far back on a nice lot with a dirt driveway, a sagging garage of its own, and another outhouse, from the roof of which I one time fell while playing, getting my pants caught on a nail on the way down and hanging there, upside down, until my mother came—as she always did—to my rescue.

  Our next real home was a two-story duplex, at 2012 Hutchins Avenue, on Rockford’s east side. It had at one time had a grocery store on the ground floor with an apartment above, and it sat nearly on the sidewalk. It had a none-too-stable one-car garage which, like the house, had a flat roof. It also had a very nice back yard with a cherry tree and a fish pond my dad and I built.

  When Uncle Buck died, Aunt Thyra moved from the Fearn family home (in which my mother was born and my grandmother had died) at 1720 School Street on Rockford’s west side, and my parents bought it. It was the only “real” house that we had ever lived in.

  I was in college at that time, and went off on my own. When I moved to Los Angeles, after sharing a house on Tareco Drive with Uncle Bob, I bought my first home, on Troost St. in North Hollywood. My parents had to cosign for it because, incredible as it sounds, banks would not give home loans to single men.

  It was a great house, and I loved it. A swimming pool, a beautiful patio with a huge avocado tree and a flowering bush I never did find the name of, which, when in bloom, smelled like crushed bananas.

  I was there about five or six years before buying an even larger home at the edge of the Angelus National Forest. It backed up on the steep foothills which attracted coyotes and rattlesnakes. It was by far the nicest of the homes in which I’ve lived.

  I then moved to Pence, Wisconsin, for reasons which will be the subject of a future entry, and had two houses there, which will best be left also for another entry.

  “Good Lord, Roger!” I hear Dorien asking: “Of what interest can this be to anyone?”

  He has a point.

  * * *

  THE LAKES

  We began going to Lake Koshkonong in southern Wisconsin, about 70 miles from our home in Rockford sometime during World War II. Some friends of my parents from the Moose Club, the Olsons, had a cottage there which they rented out. We subsequently spent several summer vacations there, in a small compound of four lakeside cottages all owned by people from Rockford.

  Lake Koshkonong is formed by the Rock River. It is about 2 miles wide and 9 miles long and very shallow…perhaps 20 feet deep at its very deepest point. We could wade out from in front of the cottage for a good block and a half without the water reaching our shoulders (and I was not very tall at the time). The bottom was also very, very muddy, and the water was muddy brown.

  It could also be deadly. Being so shallow, the winds could quickly whip it into a froth of whitecaps. The last cottage in the row of four belonged to the Skinner family, whom we knew well. One evening, they and a group of friends decided to go across the lake for a fish fry. Nine people crowded into the 16-foot boat, and on the way back the winds rose, the boat was swamped, and seven of the passengers drowned. Their cottage was sold shortly thereafter to the Fines, a very nice elderly couple from Chicago.

  When the cottage between the Olsons and the Fines also went up for sale, my parents bought it. It was small…only two small bedrooms…but it was jerry-built pleasant and had a lovely curved stone fireplace. The people who built the place had carefully gone all around the lake collecting different colored stones for it. And somewhere along the way, someone then painted it white.

  While I was in college, my “gang” of friends would frequently come up for weekends, during which we’d sing college songs all the way up and back, water ski and sunbathe during the day while we were there, and play charades, cards, and board games at night. And thinking of those days as I write, I feel the sweet ache of intense nostalgia.

  One of these weekend excursions was during rehearsals for a play, and several of the cast members came up, ostensibly to rehearse our lines. When we returned, David, one of the guys who couldn’t make it asked how it went, and with the spontaneity of college kids, a tale developed—with each of us who’d gone contributing a piece of the story—of a weekend from hell. My parents, David was told, were religious fanatics of the most fundamental sort. My mother, he was told, had spent the entire weekend doing nothing but quoting scripture and tatting an altar cloth. My father had insisted on loading us all into our boat and taking us around the lake to distribute religious pamphlets. It wasn’t fair to David, of course, but it was great fun.

  My parents came down for the play the closing night, and I told David that I wanted to be sure he met them, though he was less than thrilled by the prospect. Just before curtain, one of the girls who had been up for the “weekend from hell” came in to the dressing room to report that she’d looked out into the audience and that my parents were there. “Your dad must really be mellowing,” she said. “He’s not wearing black.”

  After the show there was a cast party to which friends and family were invited, and of course I’d asked my parents. Dad was, by pure coincidence, weari
ng a dark grey suit. I’d told him of the story we had given David, and the first chance I got, I went to bring David over to meet him. Poor David had been totally traumatized by this point and didn’t know what to expect, but he reluctantly came along.

  “David,” I began, “This is my father…” at which point my dad, poker faced, raised his hand in benediction and said solemnly “Peace, David.”

  It is one of my fondest memories of my college career.

  I miss my dad.

  * * *

  HARRY MORRIS

  I never knew Harry Morris as a person. He was, I understand, the first local soldier killed in WWI. But, from the third to the fifth grade, more than half a century ago, I attended the school named for him, and I still have strong memories of it and the students and teachers who were there when I was.

  Dan Sable, a classmate with whom I reestablished contact after more than 50 years, recently visited Rockford and took some photos of the old building, no longer a school, though I forget what he said it was now. It looks pretty darned good for its age.

  There were only 68 students in the entire school and, I believe, three teachers, though I only remember the two I had: Mrs. Larson, who bore a strong physical resemblance to Eleanor Roosevelt and was the most memorable teacher I ever had, and Mrs. Heinz, who should never have been allowed near a classroom. All I remember of Mrs. Heinz is her flaming red hair and temper to match, her obvious dislike of children, and the fact that if she ever lent you a pencil, you’d better be damned sure you returned it at the end of class.

  I have a couple other photos showing the entire student body, and I still recognize many of them, though I’m less sure on the names. There’s Dan and his cousin Marion Bender, with whom I also reestablished contact and met for lunch shortly after I moved back to Chicago. There’s Lillian Anderson, and Jean and Jesse Almond, and Dennis Huffel, and Darwin Shores, with whom I had a running feud, and who Dan tells me is now dead—though that’s impossible because he’s right there in the third row.

  I remember the long…probably about a mile…walks to and from school, past a dump where, on the way home, we’d stop and break bottles. I learned to ride a bike around the time I started third grade, but the bike my dad bought for me was really too big for me to reach the pedals comfortably. I was coming down the hill from school one day and couldn’t stop as I approached the intersection at the bottom of the hill closest to home, and was hit by a car as I zipped across the street. No damage, but it scared the bejeezus out of me and my parents, and I largely walked to school thereafter.

  I made my stage debut at Harry Morris, playing Raggedy Andy in some school production. My father’s comment: “Did your voice have to be that high?” And my earliest writing was in the form of the periodically-written “newspaper,” The Bugville News, outlining the various disasters befalling the citizens of Bugville. A la Martin Luther, I would post the paper on the front door.

  I remember the PTA mothers taking turns coming to the school during the winter to make us all hot soup…tomato and chicken noodle being my two favorites…and half-pints of milk (I always got chocolate), and going to the bathroom in the school’s basement during recess and crying because no one wanted me on their team for some game we were playing.

  As far as I can remember, I only skipped school once, during my time under Mrs. Heinz’s regime. Several of us decided we’d stage a walk out…or rather a “not go in.” We played around somewhere most of the morning and then, around lunch, I went home to ask my mother if I could have some money to go to the movies. That was obviously not the wisest of decisions.

  There are far more memories of my days at Harry Morris than I have the space here to relate, but they do go to demonstrate how many things lie just below the surface of our day-to-day consciousness, and how long they stay with us.

  * * *

  NORTHERN MEMORIES

  And life goes on. Last week’s aerial shots of the N.I.U. campus, ambulances clustered around a classroom building, had a surreal quality for me, trying to peer through the haze of fifty years and link what I was seeing on the TV to what I remember of Northern when I first enrolled there as a freshman in 1952. Oh, Lord, what a different world!

  I’m sure I’ve talked about some of this in earlier blogs, but if you’ll indulge me again: When I arrived at Northern in September of 1952, it was one of a group of State Teachers Colleges, and its name was, indeed, Northern Illinois State Teachers College. The total enrollment was around 2,500 if that. Women outnumbered men several-fold. I moved into the just-completed men’s dormitory building, Gilbert Hall…which was so new they had not yet finished laying the sod for the spacious lawns in front of the building.

  The campus very much resembled a park. In the center of a large pond in the middle of the campus was a small island on which graduations were held.

  There were probably 10 buildings on campus: the brand new dorms, Gilbert Hall and Neptune Hall, Adams Hall, Glidden, the beautiful Sven Parson Library, the Science Building (both made of yellow limestone), the Administration building, and McMurray school in which student teachers got to practice what would become their life’s work. Reavis Hall was built in the previously empty spaces west of the main campus while I was in service and opened when I returned.

  Across the street to the north side of Gilbert Hall were half a dozen long army-barracks type buildings which housed married students and a few offices, including that of the Northern Star, the campus paper for which I wrote several articles movie reviews and, after returning from the Navy, had a weekly column.

  The Administration Building, with its mediaeval tower which still serves as the campus “logo” contained offices, a few classrooms, the school auditorium and, in the floor of the entry, the school seal, which was, by tradition, never to be walked on.

  There was also a small building just on the edge of campus closest to the town of DeKalb which served as the Student Union.

  It was an insular world: small, warm, familiar, and comfortable, filled with friends and laughter and, most important of all, an innocence which, for the rest of the world and now for Northern, has been destroyed forever.

  Today, there is a 14-story tower which houses the Student Union and a hotel for campus visitors.

  The campus has spread out to the west into what was, when I was there, farmland. There’s a stadium now and more buildings than I could count. The aerial shots of the campus, showing the Cole Hall, mainly focused on this new part of the campus, showing places that simply did not exist when I was a student. And on the part of the campus with which I was most familiar, the lawns are largely gone. New buildings stand cheek-to-jowl. I have no idea if the pond and the island are still there, but I might tend to doubt it.

  Gilbert hall is now an office building, the rooms in which I and my friends lived and gathered and laughed and studied and dreamed are now cubicles for the campus bureaucracy.

  It’s odd to see Northern now. It’s still my school, and I am part of its past. But I am not part of its present. And I know that those attending Northern now…more than ten times the number of when I enrolled…have their own friends, their own places to gather, to talk, to laugh, and, I hope, to build wonderful memories which will last them for the rest of their lives.

  * * *

  NOW PLAYING

  Fairly recently I reestablished contact, after nearly 50 years, with a friend from my grade-school/cub-scout/college days, Ted Bacino. I have often said that the mark of a true friend is the ability, after not having been in contact for years, to effortlessly pick up where it left off. Such is the case with Ted, and I have him to thank for reopening long-closed doors of memory.

  We’ve been, for the past couple of exchanges, talking about our home town, Rockford, Illinois, and what we remember of it in the 1940s?1950s. We got to talking of Rockford’s movie theaters, and the nostalgia, for me, is almost palpable.

  When we were growing up, Rockford was an industrial town of 90,000; t
he second largest machine-tool producer in the country, which was a source of civic pride. (Machine tools are the machines that make the parts for other machines.) We had ten movie theaters: The Coronado, Midway, Times, Palace, State, Rex, Capitol, and Rialto, with the post-WWII additions of the Auburn and, in the suburb of Loves Park, the Park. Both the Auburn and the Park were modified Quonset huts.

  The Coronado was the city’s flagship movie house in the Grand Dame lush tradition of Movie Palaces.

  By far the largest of Rockford’s theaters, it had a Moorish theme, with a grand, red-carpeted staircase sweeping up to the huge balcony. The walls of the auditorium were made to resemble a Moorish town, with small balconied building facades extending out above the seats. The ceiling was painted an evening-sky blue, with stars.

  It and its closest rival, The Midway, showed nothing but the biggest, first run movies. The Coronado was on the west side of the Rock River, which cuts the city in half, and the Midway…which had elements of San Simeon in its exterior design…was on the east side, across from the city’s largest hotel and tallest building, the 12-story Faust.

  The Times, just a block south of the Coronado, had an art deco facade and, while probably only a third the size of the Coronado or Midway, was one of my favorites. It played the less-than-blockbuster first-runs and occasionally a second run of a popular film which had first played the Coronado or Midway.

  We had a vaudeville theater, too: the aptly named Palace. I don’t know what circuit it was on, but I’ve read and heard that Rockford was a really tough town to play and was noted in vaudeville circles for the audience “sitting on its hands.” (When I was growing up, Rockford was at least 75 percent Swedish, a nationality not known for its bubbly good humor.) The Palace had seen much better days by the time I came along, but still had vaudeville shows on weekends, between showings of not-quite-stellar films. Ted reminded me that they even had their own version of the Rockettes: the Palace Theater (pronounced “Thee-A-ter”) Adorables, and the orchestra was under the baton of Paul Walker. You could time it to go in in time for a vaudeville show, sit through the movie, then see another vaudeville.